Leon Battista Alberti (February 18, 1404 – April 20, 1472) was an Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer, and general Renaissance humanist polymath. Alberti's life was described in Giorgio Vasari's Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori or 'Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects'.
An Italian humanist, Alberti is often seen as a model of the Renaissance "...
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Leon Battista Alberti (February 18, 1404 – April 20, 1472) was an Italian author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer, and general Renaissance humanist polymath. Alberti's life was described in Giorgio Vasari's Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori or 'Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects'.
An Italian humanist, Alberti is often seen as a model of the Renaissance "universal man." He was born in Genoa, one of two illegitimate sons of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Lorenzo Alberti. Leon Battista's mother, Bianca Fieschi, was a Bolognese widow who died during an outbreak of bubonic plague. Like many other families, the Albertis had been expelled from their native city, Florence, by the republican government, run by the Albizzis. At the time of Leon Battista's birth, his father Lorenzo lived in Genoa, but the family soon moved to Venice, where Lorenzo ran the family bank with his brother. Lorenzo married...
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